Santa Rosa - Home of Lourdes and William

Dear Family and Friends,

Chuck and I were very privileged to have a wonderful inside view of life in Santa Rosa. Lourdes and William invited us to visit Santa Rosa and meet their families.

Lourdes is our housekeeper.  We have become very close to her and her family.  Last week they invited us to come to Santa Rosa to meet their families.  We were honored to accept.

We picked Lourdes, William and Ivan up at their house at 7:30am on Saturday morning and headed west to Santa Rosa.  Santa Rosa is located about 20 miles southeast of Machala.  It took us about 4 hours to drive there.

Both Lourdes' and William's families live outside Santa Rosa in the country.  No paved streets outside of town. The first thing we noticed when we arrived at William's parents home is that someone shared Chuck's love of gardening.  

Everyone came out to greet us.  We were so welcomed.

Lourdes took us on a tour of their back yard.

She proudly showed us all the fruit growing in their backyard.

After the backyard tour, Lourdes, William, his mom and grandmother all gathered in the kitchen to make lunch.

 Ivan shows off the fried plantains his mother made.

We had them with the shrimp ceviche they prepared.

After lunch, Chuck crashed in our bedroom.  We were given the bedroom that has a door.  The other bedrooms had curtains for privacy.

He wasn't the only one napping.

Here are some pictures of William's family.

William's mom and dad.

 William with his grandmother.

William's uncle on the left.

While Chuck and the dog were napping, we went out in the backyard to harvest some coconuts.  His family wanted me to taste fresh coconut water. William climbed up on a stool to harvest some coconuts.

His dad, used a machete to chop the top of the coconut so that there was just a hole for the water to come out of.

Here, Lourdes is holding a glass and the coconut with the hole in the top.  She put glass on top of the coconut upside down and then flipped them over.  Eureka! A glass of coconut water.  We passed it around and all had a taste.

Then the coconut was split open and everyone had some of the meat.

After Chuck's nap, we went over to Lourdes' mother's house.  I will post about that visit tomorrow.  Too much to share in one blog posting.

After visiting Lourdes' mother, we came back to Williams home.  William joined in a neighborhood soccer game.  Chuck did some porch sitting.

and I photographed flowers in William's mother's garden.

As the sun was starting to go down, the misquitos started swarming.  There is no glass in the windows because they need the breeze to flow through the house.  We were handed a towel to swat at the little pests.  As a family, we watched soccer on television.  Ecuador vs. Mexico.  Ecuador won!!

They insisted that I have the seat of honor, the family's version of a Lazy Boy.  I was so comfortable that I slept through half the game.

We slept under a misquito net.  This was a first for us.  It worked very good.

In the morning, we had freshed squeezed orange juice and tamales wrapped in banana leaves for breakfast.

We had a great time.  Again, we are so fortunate to be able to have a peek at life in the country.  These people do not have a lot of material things, but the love they have for each other is very valuable.

Tomorrow I will share about visiting Lourdes' mom and the banana plantation.

Love,
Nancy